Tuesday, November 22, 2011

For the love of it

About two weeks ago, I racked the Gewürztraminer (took it off its fermentation lees and moved it into another storage vessel).

Three tests convinced me that the fermentation was going no where at
that point, even though the tests showed that between ¼ and ½ percent
residual sugar remained—that is the risk of a cool fermentation. I know
that fermentations generally do not truly end with zero sugar, but I did
want no higher than ¼ percent.

Perhaps, I could have avoided the problem by using some other yeast
or maybe by warming the fermentation, but I wanted all the aromatics and
fruit forwardness that a cool fermentation promises. In winemaking, as
in life, having it all is not an option, but in winemaking, if we know
what we are doing, we get a fantastic chance at taking what we are
handed and balancing it, and so...

The Riesling percolates toward the end of its fermentation. This wine
will be my balancing material. Its pH is so low, and its total acidity
so high compared to the Gewürztraminer that before me is the opportunity
to see if I know what I am doing. By managing a blend between the two
wines, I will attempt to correct Gewürztraminer’s mouth feel while
subduing the Riesling’s acidic nature.

This is fun. It’s also been enlightening, as I never evaluated how
much I missed making wine since that last batch at my winery in 1993.

Sadly, had I been able to hold out financially a little longer I
might have been able to ride the wave that swelled in the late 90s and
into this century, producing an effervescence of new wineries in the
Finger Lakes, like a hot fermentation foaming over the top of the tank.

Knowing that I had struggled with bouts of depression throughout my
life, my wife worried greatly that closing the winery would send me into
a downward spiral. She had seen some of my worst spirals (something to
do with childhood trauma, although I always thought that growing up poor
on the mean streets of Brooklyn was the next best thing to Nirvana!).
But the depression did not come. In fact, I was relieved after closing
the winery.

I worked so hard and so much through the eight years that I operated
the winery, doing things that I loved, and for that I was grateful to
have had the chance. I also, however, worked hard doing things that I
hated, like having to listen to the inanities of the tourists that
traipsed through the region, having to deal with retailers that demanded
free wine in order for me to “sell” them a case of my wine, having to
fill out myriad federal and state forms, and having to make so many
decisions—every day, decisions.

It was a relief to get the business side of winemaking off my back.
Nope, there was no depression.

More important, there was no regret
either. I had done what I set out to do. The fact that it didn’t work
out the way I wanted it to work out was merely the consequence of bad
planning and bad timing, and timing really is everything.

So, as low key and small as the effort is, I am back to making wine—and loving it.

While in the midst of nasty bout myself in the mid 90's I read this in a book by Marie-Louise von Franz : "sometimes you have make like a one-eyed pig running through a muddy ditch in the night"Now that I have cheered you up, Happy Thanksgiving and keep on, my friend.

Wine Bloggers Conference = You pay your way (travel and board) to a press junket where you eagerly regurgitate whatever info they dish out because they give you free wines, free food and make you feel important while the keynote speaker delivers some absurd stuff like: "Ditch you 50K/year job, you can make so much more money with your blogger account!" or "Don't taste wines, feel them"....

Send me an email and try to be specific. I'm not sure what you mean by the "right reasons."

I have a big problem with wine criticism and a great deal of wine blogging. For instance, one of the top, recognized bloggers lost me as a reader after I corrected a mistake that was on the blog, but instead of posting my correction comment, the blogger corrected the blog entry and never acknowledged publicly what had transpired.

One of the things wrong with blogging is it often presents itself behind a faux journalistic scrim.